Anomaly
by Binkasaurus
Summary: "'Check out what I found' Smiling proudly, his hand shot out of his pocket and stretched out in front of him so we could both see. Dangling from his fingers was a deformed, dirt coated, green and black wristwatch." AU. Maybe possibly Gwevin.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is just some weird AU fic I came up with. Pretty much, it's about what would happen if Ben never got the Omnitrix... but all the other crazy stuff still happened. Needless to say, things get deranged. I'm also trying to make things a little more realistic than the original series in terms of collateral damage and such._

_DISCLAIMER: Don't own Ben 10, or any of its characters._

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><p><em>626/05 _

_Dear Diary,_

_Remember everything I said about how this summer was going to reek because I was going to be stuck on this boring roadtrip with Grandpa Max? Turns out I was beyond right. Why?_

_Because, apparently, Ben's coming too. _

_I swear, that kid is not going to make it to the end of this trip if he keeps up what he's been doing. I've lost count of how many times he's managed to get on my nerves in the past three hours. (Which were, by the way, three of the worst hours of my life.) I can't stand a day around that dweeb, let alone a whole summer!_

_I can't believe I'm missing that beach trip with Emily for this. That's it, the second I get somewhere with cell phone reception (Grandpa decided to park us in the middle of some national park to go camping), I'm calling my mom and talking her out of this._

"Come on guys," Grandpa called, far to enthusiastic for my tastes, "let's go roast some marshmallows!"

Both Ben and I buried our faces into our private electronic screens, trying to block out our Grandpa and each other.

"Okay then… how about some campfire songs?"

No response.

"So are you two just going to mope around all day, or are we going to have some fun?"

"Moping sounds good," Ben grumbled.

"I vote moping," I added immediately after. I glanced up from my laptop, only to see that Grandpa's face had practically fallen through the floor. My stomach twitched as a load of guilt was dumped into it. Disappointing Grandpa wasn't on my to-do list, but I couldn't risk doing anything that involved interacting with dorkface.

Well, except making fun of him. That was totally worth interaction.

"What 'cha doing, Gwen?" Grandpa asked in an attempt to start conversation.

I opened a new Firefox window, and Google search popped up on the screen. "Just looking up cures for extreme doofusness," I snarked, glancing over at Ben. He looked up, confused. "Not results yet Ben, but let's not give up hope!"

He snarled at me and looked back down at his handheld game. "I'm gonna go for a walk." He dropped his game on the chair and stomped off, hands in pockets, refusing to make eye contact with either of us.

_If I had known doofus was coming, I would have done a whole lot more prep. You know, thought up new insults, practiced my Jujitsu, planned pranks, that sort of thing. At least then I could have a little fun here._

_Anyway, on the bright side, we're going to Washington D.C. tomorrow. I'm _so _excited. I've always wanted to climb the Washington Monument. Except Ben's going to be there, and he'll probably ruin everything. This stinks. Majorly. Things can't get much worse. Well, I need to do some research._

_~Gwen_

"Ben's been gone for a while," Grandpa remarked.

I smirked. "Maybe he wound up bearfood?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"I can dream, can't I?" I asked, raising one back.

Suddenly, an annoyingly high-pitched shout shot through the camp. "GUYS!"

I turned my head in the direction of the noise. And, lo and behold, out from the forest tumbled a rather excited looking Ben.

"Hey Grandpa!" he called, ignoring me entirely as he ran up. "Check out what I found!"

Smiling proudly, his hand shot out of his pocket stretched out in front of him so we could both see. Dangling from his fingers was a deformed, dirt coated, green and black wristwatch.

"That's great, Ben," Grandpa said, a bit unsure of how he was supposed to react.

"Yeah, a watch, very exciting!" I added with words coated in sarcasm.

Ben wrapped the watch's strap around his scrawny left wrist and secured it. "Best of all, it still works!" he chirped. "At least one thing went right today." As he spoke, he glared at me out of the corner of his eye.

Having nothing more to add, I sighed and looked back at my computer. This was going to be a long summer. A long, agonizing summer.

I clicked on the search box and typed: CURES FOR EXTREME DOOFUSNESS. I felt sort of silly, but it was worth a shot. I hit enter.

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><p>We just sat there.<p>

We didn't move. We didn't speak. We barely breathed.

The only sounds came from outside, muffled footsteps and hurried talking and panicked shouting and sirens.

The three of us sat alone, sheltered from the world by the RV's rusty walls. We sat and mulled over the past hour. Trying to acknowledge what happened.

I closed my eyes, running it through my head once again. Claws and teeth and feathers flashed in my minds eyes. Falling shelves and crumbling walls. That man, laughing throughout the whole ordeal. Just laughing.

Did… did that really just happen?

I lightly touched my nose. I felt no flesh, only bandages and sharp pain. I had tripped, fallen on my face. They couldn't take me to the hospital, all of the ambulances were occupied by those who had been severely wounded, so they had to fixed up my nose on site and send me with Grandpa. I looked over at Ben, examining the white and red wrap stretching all the way up his left arm. They had done the same for him.

This couldn't be happening. It was impossible. It wasn't the fact that we were involved in a disaster like this, but what the disaster was. It didn't make any sense.

My head pounded with pain and confusion. I needed to get this all out. Slowly I reached under the table, pulling out and started up my laptop. I couldn't see how Grandpa was responding, but the sudden noise had no effect on Ben. It didn't even seem to reach him. I opened up Microsoft Word and began to type.

_6/28/05 _

_Dear Diary,_

_I said that things couldn't get much worse. I was wrong._

_I don't really know what happened. We were in M-Mart, looking for dinner. I had stopped in the pet section to play with some of the hamsters. I was looking at one of them in its cage, but suddenly it… changed. Turned into some sort of giant monster. Same with a bird nearby. They tried to attack me, I ran. The whole store was in a panic, it was insane._

_Eventually I found Ben. He was cornered by the bird. It tried to claw him and it got his arm. He ran for it and I ran after him. We found Grandpa and made it out right before the building caved in. I broke my nose, Ben got a huge cut on his arm. Compared to a lot of people, we got off easy. The EMTs fixed all of us up, and now we're waiting for the traffic to clear so we can get the heck out of this stupid city. Looks like we won't be climbing the Washington Monument after all._


	2. Chapter 2

_Supah short one. Next one is longer, I promise. XD_

_DISCLAIMER: I own nada._

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><p>I'd never seen Ben act this way before.<p>

I scrolled through the computer history on my laptop. I knew that he had stolen the computer and used it for a couple of hours while Grandpa and I were out at that fish market. I'd given him a scolding and a bop on the head for it and everything. The fact that there were sites on here I hadn't visited wasn't what bothered me; it was what those sites were. News articles and videos and blogs on the mutant animal attacks. Medical reports on the victims. College science studies with the name Aloysius Animo, who supposedly set off the attack. Several Wikipedia pages on biology and mutation and birds and frogs and hamsters.

I looked at the time between his page changes on Wikipedia. Mostly it didn't seem like a wikisurf. Two of the pages he spent half an hour each on. Which would suggest that he was actually… reading it? I don't care how interesting the subject matter is, Ben would be physically and psychologically unable to stare at the same webpage for that long.

I glanced up at him, sitting across the table from me. He was… drawing. The first thing that went through my mind: _Jeez, first reading, now doing some creative? Was the skin on your arm the only thing that broke in the incident, or did your brain break too?_

I was tempted to say it, start a little insult spar with him, just for kicks. But I held my tongue. In the past three days, none of us had brought up what happened even once. I was scared of how Ben- or Grandpa- would respond if I were to bring it up again. Or how I would react. I had managed to whittle down the whole experience into a single reference word, the incident, so I could theoretically talk about it without actually thinking about what happened. But I hadn't tested that out yet, and the last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of doofus over there, or something equally stupid.

I craned my neck over the top of the computer screen, trying to see what was going on on Ben's paper. Despite the fact it was upside down and the drawing itself was rather cruddy, I recognized it. My eyes widened, though at the same time I wasn't surprised.

_7/1/05_

_Dear Diary,_

_So far, today's been pretty boring. Grandpa says we're just going to have a down day or something, and of course he does this right when I actually want to go do something. Now that I think about it, the only not down day we've had this week is yesterday, where we went to that amusement park for a little while. I think Grandpa is still shaken by the incident. I mean, I sort of am too, and probably Ben as well. _

_Speaking of Ben, he's been acting beyond strange lately. I just found in my computer history that he spent half an hour on the mutation page on Wikipedia. Since when does he read? Plus he's drawing. It's a picture of the bird. I know this is going to sound weird, but I'm seriously starting to worry about him. He's completely obsessed with what happened, it can't be healthy. As much as I despise him, he's still my cousin, and I want to help but I don't know how._

_Sometimes, I think we should all just go to therapy._

"Gwen?"

I glanced up from my document at Ben. "Yeah?"

His eyes didn't rise from his picture. He hadn't been making much eye contact lately, either. "Have you ever felt like… you know, we could have done something? To stop what happened?"

His question caught me off guard. I stared at him, a bit shocked, as he continued to scribble away with his pencil.

"Ben, there's nothing-"

He cut me off. "The hamster was three aisles down."

I went silent, not as much of a comment on how he interrupted me.

"There was a loose plastic tent pole right next to me. I could have picked it up easily, even with one arm injured. And if I used it to push the top of that shelf, it would have toppled over onto the next one, which would go from the next one to the next one until a one of them finally hit the hamster and crushed it. It would have given the man it was stalking a chance to get away, so he wouldn't have gotten bitten in the leg, his leg wouldn't have gotten infected, and right now he wouldn't be in hospital not knowing if he's going to live or die."

For a while, I was at a complete loss for words.

"…Ben, you couldn't possibly have known that."

His eyes showed themselves to me for the first time that conversation.

"I thought of that plan while I was standing there," he stated. "But I didn't do it. I wasn't strong enough. I was a coward and ran."

He half cringed and looked away, as if he couldn't bring himself to look me in the eyes. All I did was sit there, trying to process what he had just said. No one said a word. It was like sitting in the Rustbucket after the incident all over again.

"I don't blame you for not going through with it." I finally said, breaking the silence. "If I were you, I wouldn't have done it either. I can't think of anyone who would. You can't keep beating yourself up over this."

He didn't reply.


	3. Chapter 3

**Bwaaaaa, sorry for the delay everyone! I have a million excuses that you probably don't want to hear, but I'll tell you anyway. For one thing, it was the last week of term 2, and I had a million stupid little things to make up. Second, I'm trying something with this story: I never post a chapter until I've completed the chapter after it, so it has a chance to sit for a while and I can edit it more effectively. And let me tell you, Chapter 4 is ridiculously long compared to the rest of these. So yeah, sorry!**

**And this is where things start getting a little exciting. XD Special thank you to ETERN4L and crystalwolfx for their kind reviews!**

**Don't own Ben 10, yadda yadda yadda. Let's get on with it.**

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><p><em>714/05_

_Dear Diary,_

_Today marks the early end of my little summer adventure._

Ever since the mutant animal incident, weird stuff has been happening all over the country. So much that people started to think they're connected. After over two weeks of this, they went to the government, demanding that the issue be acknowledge. Explained. Acted on.

So that's what they got. Well, for the most part.

It's all anyone was talking about- Anomalies, they've become known as. Technically, the definition of the term is any crime that is committed by means unexplainable by modern science. Though the public has for the most part come to think of it as anything- or anyone- freaky. They created an entire new division of the FBI or something, just to deal with these strange new threats. And while they had been successful at putting a stop to the events, they just couldn't seem to do it fast enough.

And of course, somehow, Ben and I always managed to get there first. I swear, we were present at every single major Anomaly event that happened those first few weeks of that summer. Animo, Sparksville, Rojo's Gang, all of them. We were even just a few miles away from the subway train crash supposedly set off by a kid who can shoot electricity from his hands; we didn't see it, but we heard the boom of compressing metal. Honestly, if I hadn't known any better, I'd think we were causing all this. And unfortunately I wasn't sure if Ben did know better.

We got caught in another one two days ago. It's the first we were directly involved in, admittedly. I was the victim.

_I'm still in the hospital recovering. Ben got out already, but now he's too busy with interviews to hang around. Not that I mind. The break from his constant dweebing is nice. Although I kind of wish he was here. Who am I kidding, diary, I NEED him right now. I've never been so depressed in my life, I almost want to just pull these stupid IVs out of my arm and give up now. The doctor said this is normal after what happened to me. He told me to call for him if I ever needed some company. I don't want to talk to him. He smells bad and his face looks too much like the Anomaly that did this to me. I want to talk to Ben. _

_Mine and Ben's parents are finally putting a stop to this and calling us back to Bellwood. I'm glad. I can't take this anymore._

_I haven't written in a while. I'm been too busy, and too scared to think about it. I guess I should tell you what happened to me exactly. _

_It all started when Grandpa took us to the circus._

"Come on kids, the show's about to start!"

At the time, I was more excited than I had been all summer. I'd never been to a circus before, always wanted to go. And this time, there was no giant lake monster, no hi-tech gangster girls. The tent was right there. A normal summer activity was just within my reach, and I was going to grab and hold on like there was no tomorrow.

A wide smile stretched across my face, I jogged into the tent after him. I turned and look at Ben expectantly. He seemed a whole lot less excited than I was. I frowned and raised an eyebrow at him.

"Ben," I said flatly, "nothing's going to happened."

He bit his lip and crossed his arms, trudging over to us. He past me and muttered, "You don't know that."

Grandpa looked down at him, suddenly worried. "Ben, did you see something?"

I understood Grandpa's concern. Ben had called the last Anomaly before anyone, when he saw that Rojo girl's weapon peaking out of her trunk fifteen minutes before anything actually happened. If he noticed something we didn't, not even I was going to take the chance at this show.

"No."

"Why so grumpy then?" I asked, relieved, poking him in the arm with my elbow lightly. He winced. I must've hit his old wound from Animo. I quickly apologized, but he neither paid attention nor cared.

"I just…" he hesitated. He face was straight for the most part, he was fairly good at keeping it that way, but I could hear profound embarrassment in is voice. "I have a bad feeling about this, okay?"

"Really?" I smirked.

"Ben, you're probably just wound up still about Rojo," Grandpa assured him. The name seemed to remind him of his injury, so he shifted more of his weight off of the cast on his foot and onto his crutches. "Just relax, there's nothing to worry about."

Ben did the arm crossing, lip biting thing again, but looked away and said nothing. He followed us in without a word.

I kept the corner of my eye on him curiously. At one point, we passed a poster with the face of the ringmaster, Zombozo the Clown. For a quick moment, he flinched, and I caught a glimpse of terror in his eyes. No way, he couldn't be…

Mere minutes after we took our seats, Ben got up and left, claiming he had to get some popcorn. Yeah right. At that point, I had definitively decided that it was the clown that was scaring him half to death. I made a mental note to exploit this phobia for all it's worth later.

Just after he exited, the lights dimmed and the show began.

I can't remember much after that. A spotlight came up, and there was Zombozo. A curtain dropped, revealing a huge machine. The Psyclown, I think. It powered on. There were lights. He said things I couldn't hear. But it was really, really funny.

I was in a truck, on the road. It was still funny, funnier than the show had been. I didn't know where I was, but I was laughing too hard to ask. We sat and laughed, I'm not sure how long. I didn't realize there was anything wrong until I tried to stop. I couldn't.

So I just laughed. My lungs burned for air. My body was feeling weaker and weaker. And it was cold. So cold. My heart raced in panic. I tried to escape, focus on how bad I felt, but it only made it worse. I laughed so hard I cried, tears of everything but joy.

I managed to fight my eyes open. I saw the others in the car. Seven. Something was happening to them. Their flesh seemed to be vanishing off their very bodies. Their skin was losing its color, shrinking and stretching over the bones. My stomach tightened in disgust and fear. Was that… happening to me? I tried to look, by my eyes squeezed shut as another violent guffaw escaped my lips.

I was on the floor. My strength, gone. To the point even that, although all of my energy was being forcibly funneled into the act of laughing, it came out as a soft chuckle. I felt dead.

I was able to get to my eyes open at that point. I was in a tent. Like the one from the show, but a little different. Likely a new location. A new town where he'd collect another set of victims. He was standing over me, looking down at me. Grinning. A grin that made me want to crawl under a rock and never come out. Whatever curse had a hold of me found it hilarious.

"I must say, little girl," Zombozo hissed, "you've lasted me longer than I expected."

He kneeled down, looked at me straight on. His eyes were yellow. No whites, pinpoint pupils. Through my giggles, I shuddered.

"The rest of them expired hours ago," he continued, breath hot on my icy face. "But you, you're only just starting to show signs." He reached out and touched my hand, an unwelcome gesture; I wanted nothing more than to pull away, but I was frozen. He held my hand up close to my face. Curiosity called out to me and I opened my eyes. My skin, grey. Fingers, bony and shriveled.

"At the rate you're going, you could last me for days!" he said, with equal parts wonder and sadism. "Not only that, but you've been giving me as much as all the other volunteers combined."

Volunteers? I thought. I never volunteered for anything.

I felt his sweaty palm press down on my forehead, his fingers run through my hair. I wanted to throw up. "You truly are something, my dear," he sighed. "It will be sad to see you go."

I remember it all, much too clearly. Sitting there in agony for hours, my life bleeding out of my splitting sides. It felt like days. Wishing that I could just black out, so I could die quietly.

And just when I was about to truly surrender, in came my savior.

Ben bolted in through the side of the tent, howling like a berserker and brandishing a solid iron pipe of some sort over his head. He charged right at my captor and swung his weapon, landing it right in his temple. Zombozo fell to the ground without so much as a shout of pain.

I felt no relief, but the hope that washed over me was overwhelming. Yes, the life was still being siphoned out of my being, but for every drop drained, two more took its place. I didn't know where I was pulling this new vitality from. But it was there. My laughs picked up pace to match it, but that involuntary effort wasn't enough to steal it all.

Ben took a moment to hit Zombozo's unmoving form a few times with the pipe. Although every second of delay was another step closer to death for me, it was worth it to get to watch that. After satisfied with his work, Ben looked over at me, really took in what he saw. I'd never seen him look so horrified before.

He ran over to me, threw himself onto his knees, shook my shoulders. "Gwen?" he called out to me desperately. "Gwen, are you alright?"

I put my energy to lifting a finger and holding it behind me, pointing at the mechanic mountain behind me. The Psyclown, center stage. Buzzing and glowing. I strained to keep my quacking finger aloft, but I expended my will and allowed it to plummet to the ground. The last thing I managed was to look up at the horrible machine, and saw Ben standing in my view, poised to toss his pipe right up at one of the many glass domes.

The next thing I knew, I couldn't laugh. Never in my life had I felt so relieved.

"Ben?" I groaned. Although my energy had returned- all of it- I was hesitant to expend it again. Barely a second after the word left me, I felt his arms wrapping around me in a desperate embrace. They pulsed and shook, as if they were barely able to contain the adrenaline-shot blood that raced through them in a circuit, a tornado that blew me back away from death's doorstep.

"Thank you," I muttered.

I guess that my breath on his ear made both of us realize how close we were to each other at that moment. And with my strength returning and his rush fading, our shared desire for reassuring human contact was dropping below the point where we were willing to use each other to fulfill it. Our lifelong rivalry suddenly at the front of our minds, we untangled and slid away from each other on the coarse dirt of the circus ring.

I followed my cousin's gaze as it drifted to the motionless heap of cloth and fat formerly known as Zombozo the Clown. His visage brought me an odd sense of detachment, the kind you get when you think about a nightmare you had last night and realize how stupid the whole thing was in retrospect. It wouldn't be until the news stations started churning out stories that the reality of what happened to me would set in.

"So," I sighed, breaking the tired silence. "Where's that popcorn?"

Ben chuckled. I hoped that he wouldn't crack a joke back, at least not a good one (which, I admit, he was capable of from time to time). I didn't feel like laughing.

Luckily, he didn't. "Maybe we should get out of here, before he wakes up."

"Agreed."


End file.
